Desiree
Khane was staying at the house again today. The horror I had witnessed last night had kept sleep from finding me, but I still managed to slide out of bed when the scent of bacon found its way to me. It meant the other Khane was back. The good one.
The moment I entered the kitchen, and he allowed me to start helping him, the scene in the basement last night started to fade. I assisted him with breakfast again, which set a happy tone for the start of my day. The cooking lessons meant the world to me, and I acknowledged him for his patience and the time he was spending with me.
We ate and enjoyed pleasant small talk but chose to ignore our undeniable chemistry. The hot sizzle floated all around us, lighting up my body every time we touched. When our eyes connected, my heart knocked with force against my chest, alerting me to what I already knew. I was falling for Khane.
Although last night had its own locked room in my mind, I couldn’t deny that Khane caressed me in warmth and provided me a special kind of security. I had never felt so safe than when I was with him. I had never been inspired to embrace my own strengths. He made me want to be stronger for myself. He made me smile at a time when I would have otherwise been weeping at the events unfolding in my life.
At a glance, I could tell that he didn’t believe my perceptions of him. I was sure he had never embraced the good that had rested dormant within himself. I didn’t believe he had ever truly acknowledged that he possessed the kindness and goodness that I sensed, and that he bestowed on me in such abundance.
He was a raging flame, and I was a lowly moth, unable to resist the strong pull of his radiant energy. Instead of sitting across the large dining room table from him, this time, I had parked myself right next to him.
I would occasionally reach onto his plate, eating from it, and being way too comfortable with him. My actions gave him pause and caused him to flash me funny looks, but he didn’t comment, knowing it would spark a conversation I believed he was avoiding.
I kept hearing him mouth under his breath, five more days. It was the amount of days he had left before Arjen returned and he would be free of me.
Like now, I was sipping from his glass of juice while mine sat untouched. He stared, his eyes on my lips wrapping around the area of the glass his lips had just been.
The way he watched me, so quiet and unmoving, as he scanned my every move; every spoon lifted, every twitch in my seat. I’d never had a man watch me that way, as though I was the most exciting thing they had ever seen. Like watching me was a privilege he didn’t want to take for granted.
Khane had the ability to make my skin hum songs to him, and my pulse dash off into a race with my heartbeat. I wasn’t myself around him. I was bold and aggressive in a way that I had suppressed. There was something inside of him that called so strongly that I answered every time. He either wasn’t as aware of it as I was, or his strength kept him in line. How could he resist a pull so strong?
At times, I found myself helpless, consumed by infinite thoughts of him. His effortlessly tossed dark hair. His brutally manly physique. It all summed up to equal a beautiful living portrait for my imagination, and havoc for my desperately starved sex.
After breakfast, I put in a few hours of work and ended up at the lookout where I found Khane. The first sight of him stopped me in my tracks as my breath caught in my chest. Shirtless, with his back to me, he was doing pull-ups. The muscles drew taut in his back and arms as the delicious image tugged on the loose thread holding my sexual urges in check.
However, bulging muscles and the sexiest back I had ever seen wasn’t the kicker. The most shocking part of the whole situation was where he had chosen to exercise. Two parallel bars with a crossbar at the top had been mounted into the ledge of the balcony. I had previously glanced at the bars sitting off to the far edge of the balcony and ignored them.
Khane continued lifting his body in mid-air, clinging to a metal bar cemented into the balcony that dropped off the side of the mountain. If he slipped, lost balance or strength, he was dead. Over the cliff he would go, and it would be goodbye to my fiancé’s super-hot brother. I stood admiring the view. How many of those things could he do?
The bar was high off the six-inch-wide ledge below him. How was he going to dismount? He lowered one last time and swung a few times, sending my heart into my stomach as it appeared he was about to leap to his death. When his body swung back, he released and jumped down to the balcony floor.
Choppy steps drew me closer to him. He had scared me so badly that my hands were shaking. This scared me more than seeing him torture someone. When he turned and saw me, he reached for and quickly yanked on his shirt. Even through my fright, I had taken visual snapshots of his devilishly tempting body. I eased up to him, my hand still over my heart.
“You scared the shit out of me. Why would you do that? Do you have a death wish?”
He had the nerve to laugh, and I swatted at his arm for doing so. When his smile deepened, so did mine, although I tried to suppress it to look serious.
“Sorry I scared you. I thought you knew what the bar was for.” He pointed at the thing that appeared to be the open metal doorway to death.
I stepped closer to the balcony and allowed the view to settle my nerves. Khane lingered near the death bar, peering out at the mountains.
After a silent moment and only after my heart had resettled, did I glance over at him. I sidestepped closer, unable to resist the pull, an invisible line that always led me in his direction. I didn’t say anything right away but stalked him with my eyes while sneaking in snatches of the splendid view. His towering height, his big strong body, and his bulging muscles worked under all of that nicely-inked and tanned skin to seduce me.
The man was sinfully appealing, every part of him demanding I reach out and touch. A deep shoulder-lifting inhale had me soaking up his devilishly alluring scent that was glazed over by a light dusting of his cologne and now, a light sheen of sweat.
The whirling tension between us had me swallowing my desire before I ended up trying to kiss him again. I had given into temptation and lost control of myself. The most dangerous thing about the situation was that I wasn’t sorry about it.
Nipples hard and aching. My pulse jumped in all the areas I wanted his mouth, my body’s way of begging for what it couldn’t have. My own body was telling on me, inching and leaning closer to him, the need intensifying the longer I was within his reach.
I craved him, needing to know how his lips would feel against mine, and how his big hands would feel sliding over my hot skin. My fist clenched tighter as the urge to touch him grew stronger the longer I stared.
“This is your favorite place, I see.” I decided to speak or end up embarrassing myself.
“One of them,” he replied, avoiding my gaze, although I was standing close enough for his warmth to break through the easy flowing wind and touch me.
He took a few steps away, putting distance between us and breaking apart the gripping tension that was growing stronger by the second. I gave him points for being strong because all I wanted to do was give in. I had never had this connection with anyone, so it was difficult for me to fight the pull as I was certain it was something rare. Otherwise, I would have experienced it before now.